01 October 2012

Procrastination Express

A few weeks ago, not long after the Summer Olympics ended, I was hanging out with the cast of my choral society's summer show. While we waited in the Green Room between numbers, someone mentioned procrastination. I commented that if procrastination were an Olympic event, I would be the Michael Phelps of it. Everyone laughed. Sadly, however, this is far truer than I am really inclined to admit.

I've always had a tendency to procrastinate, whether with finishing papers in college or sewing projects or whatever. And I always get things done on time, or at least enough done as makes no difference. For example, I spent most of two days cleaning my house before hosting a small gathering. And by "cleaning," I mean "de-toxifying" and "picking up piles of crap from every available flat surface and relocating them to a more appropriate location." But I still didn't get completely done. I still had a couple of rooms to dust (that they would never be in) and floors to steam and bits of soldered-on cheesy chicken casserole to finish scraping off the ceiling, none of which ever happened. It seems that years of living with slobs has caused my tidying skills to seriously decline. I mean, why fight a losing battle? If you can't clean them, join them, right?

When we moved here, the new caveat was that the main floor, which people might actually see on occasion, would remained picked up. In fairness, the hubs (or B as he shall now be known) has done reasonably well about maintaining this stricture. Meanwhile, I had all sorts of junk piled on the dining room table: stuff to go downstairs, stuff to go upstairs, pictures still to be hung when I got around to it, stuff to be put away, etc. Heck, I still had the table cloth from last Christmas covering part of the table, conveniently rolled down to the end so it was out of the way. Because I, you know, procrastinate. Currently that table is still tidy, but who knows how long they will stay that way.

Meanwhile, procrastination has also been the main theme of my blog lately, considering I haven't written a post since August and even then I only posted once or twice. Well, that's not entirely true--I've "written" several blog posts. In my head. To which people do not have consistent internet access. This is a bit of a problem. So now I have a whole backlog of potential and half-composed posts queued up in my brain awaiting freedom. The problem is that unless I sit down and start writing shortly after something interesting happens, that something rarely makes it to the page. First I don't want to try typing it up on my phone because while it's great for texting and FB mobile, it's honestly kind of a pain to do long posts on it. Then I get distracted by other things, not the least of which is spending a crap-ton of time on FB because the majority of my friends are apparently trapped in a 27" iMac.

"WMD" sounds like it ought to be a birth control device. I'm just sayin'.

Excuse after excuse piles up until the next thing I know, it's nearly 6 months later and I still haven't eulogized my mother. Or I still have pictures and a catchy tagline for my daughter's birthday post all lined up and going nowhere, even though her birthday was over four months ago. Or it's almost a year later and I still haven't written about the blog awards I received. Or I get stuck in a holding pattern because I am just obsessive enough that in my mind, I have to do things in the order in which they occurred to me, so it makes no logical sense for me to write about the dude with the zipper earrings I saw last week when I haven't even done those other things yet. I know, I know--get a life. (Working on that.)

So here I am, with a whole stack of incomplete posts that I now have to find a way to commit to writing out, knowing full-well that they will likely never turn out as awesomely as if I'd written them when they first occurred to me. The zippy phrases and wild metaphors will have slipped away and I'll be left with inane crap like: "I saw this dude. At a restaurant. With zippers. Weird." instead of what I pretend would have been far more witty and mellifluous in scope. But such is life, I suppose.

If the Avengers say so, it must be true.

My hope is to spend this month both catching up on all those "lost" posts (like "Lost Boys" but less filling) before they reach their sell-by date, as well as creating new ones and generally being just as frivolous as I usually am. As a result, I've re-committed to blogging every day and will be cross-posting at Blogher (not that this is particularly meaningful, considering I've now signed up for daily blogging for three months running and have failed miserably thus far) and on Ginger Doodle's Facebook page. So feel free to stop by and poke me if it's 11 pm EST and I still haven't thrown up a post. Or make requests for things you'd like me to consider writing, though I make no promises. And don't ask me to write about politics, because I won't. People get pissed off enough about politics without my equal-opportunity lampooning involved. So just don't. (Besides, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert do it about 1,000 times better than I ever could anyway.) I'll just stick to my random and quirky observations about life if it's all the same to you.

Speaking of random and quirky, have some "yellow curved fruit." You're welcome.

Time to disembark the Procrastination Express. See you all again soon. Or not. (Start a pool.)

I wish I had a personal assistant who I could direct to type my stream of consciousness into blog posts. "hey! cute college boy who isn't my husband! take a memo! and after that, wash my dishes, clean my laundry, and mop the floors!" Hey, that may solve our common blog slash cleaning procrastination issues!

I have a sister who procrastinates on everything. She is turning 40, and has always been that way. I am the opposite and am called upon for last minute assistance etc. BUT, She is the one to who is the sensitive one, and is always doing for others. I think we all have our own ways, and they aren't wrong, but make us uniquely "us".

If I finally figure out that time-zones thing, I'll be glad to poke you. I love poking. And writing blogposts filled with excuses why I haven't been blogging lately. And if I make that Avengers picture my background, I might write more often too. Or not, too busy watching them. *sigh*